Christmas Tarts

These little tarts make one of the fanciest entrees that could adorn your Christmas table. An Australian Christmas can either be a traditional turkey, chicken, pork, roasted vegetables and all of the trimmings, or as is more popular in the last few decades, BBQ’s and seafood, casual and laid back, a trait that Aussies are famous for.

This is yet another dish utilizing what I have growing in the garden, and whilst the tomatoes are a little while off from being ready to cultivate, the basil is winning by miles. Last year my basil crop was just OK, so I covered myself this year and planted nearly double the amount of seedlings. As it would be, every single plant has flourished and I’m already freezing pesto for the ensuing winter doldrums.

Baby Bocconcini & Roast Tomato tarts with Pesto

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 110g plain flour
• Pinch of icing sugar
• 60g cold butter
• 1 egg yolk
• 250g cherry tomatoes
• 1 tub of baby bocconcini, drained
• 1 1/2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup fresh basil pesto
• Fresh basil leaves, to garnish

Method

1. Sift flour, icing sugar and a pinch of salt into a food processor, add butter and process until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg and 1-2 tablespoons of cold water. Process until mixture forms a smooth ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 190°C.
3. Bring pastry to room temperature, roll out on a lightly floured surface and use to line four 1 x 4cm tart pans with removable bases. Refrigerate for 10 minutes (in really warm weather, I usually freeze the pastry to hasten the chilling process).
4. Line the pastry lined pan with aluminium foil and fill with pastry weights or rice. Bake for 10 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, toss the tomatoes in the oil and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place on a baking tray.
6. Remove tarts from oven and remove foil and weights. Return to oven with the tomatoes for 5 minutes or until pastry is golden and the tomatoes have softened slightly. Spread a little pesto over base of each tart and fill with bocconcini and tomatoes. Place in oven for 5 minutes to warm through. Serve with remaining pesto and basil leaves.

Source: Delicious Magazine January 2002 from Valli Little

Chriesi of Almond Corner has kindly given her time to host this weeks installment of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event founded by Kalyn, that has been one of the most successful food blog events in history, now capably overseen by Haalo from Cook Almost Anything at Least Once.

Bon Appetit and Buon Natale to all.

Bountiful Coconut Chocolate Tarts

Marita Says, the deserved winner of last month's Hay Hay its Donna Day, has chosen simplicity as the theme this month, in the form of Coconut Chocolate Tarts. I love simple, I love chocolate with coconut and tarts are just so cute to look at. Congratulations also goes to Barbara from WinosandFoodies, who created this great event, as she renews her wedding vows today with her best friend and lover. I hope you both have a wonderful day.

Hmmm, chocolate and coconut screams of Bounty Bars. How simple is that? Tick. Now the hard part, because pastry frightens the hell out of me for some reason. How can I keep the pastry within the simplicity theme, and not have it taste like cardboard? Then I remembered an episode from The Cook and the Chef, where Maggie Beer made a sour cream pastry. It looked so simple and versatile, as it can be used for both sweet or savoury dishes. So Sour Cream Pastry it is. Only three ingredients. Simple. Another tick.

Ingredients

• 1 2/3 cups (250g) plain flour
• 200g chilled unsalted butter, chopped
• 1/3 cup (80g) sour cream
• 125g milk cooking chocolate, roughly chopped
• 2 x 50g Bounty bars, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup thickened cream
• cocoa powder, to serve
• strawberry for garnish (optional)

Method

Place chocolate and Bounty bars into a small heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir with a large metal spoon, until melted and well combined. Remove from heat. Stir in cream. Place mixture into a bowl. Cover. Refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours or until firm and thick.

For the pastry, process flour and butter using pulse button until the mixture resembles very rough breadcrumbs. Add ¼ cup of the sour cream and continue to pulse, adding rest of the sour cream if needed to bring dough together enough to feel it beginning to become a ball in the processor. Press the dough quickly and gently into a rectangle. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Roll dough on a lightly floured surface or between 2 sheets of baking paper until 4mm thick. Cut out six rounds to fit into 10 cm tart tins. Refrigerate for 20 minutes or until firm.

Preheat oven to moderately hot (200°C/180°C fan-forced). Place aluminium foil and pastry weights into tart shells, and cook for about 12 minutes. The pastry will be flaky and about 2/3 of the way cooked. Remove foil and weights and cook for another few minutes until golden. With a clean tea towel, gently flatten pastry down whilst still hot, and then allow to cool.

Spoon chocolate mixture into pastry cases. Sprinkle with cocoa and pop a strawberry on top. Serve.

The Best of 2007

Decisions, decisions....especially at this time of year when my brain is fogged trying to decide what perfect gifts to give, along comes Zorra and Sandra with a fabulous event, inviting one and all to submit a mind blowing recipe that moved the world for them in 2007. You know, that OMG reaction?

Whilst not every thing I prepared this year was in that "incredible" category, most of it was good, even stuff that was on the more risky side, like Tamarillo chutney or Chickpea Fritters. New tastes and textures crossed our tongues on numerous occasions in the past year, things I would never have even dreamed of cooking a couple of years ago, thanks to the myriad of fabulous food blogs that abound the www.

One of the most "Googled hits" I have received this year was for the great Aussie Meat Pie, which was posted as "4 & 20 Blackbirds baked in a Pie". I'd like to think that the number of searches for this phrase was the world craving for an Aussie Pie, but maybe there are just a lot of people who don't know the words to the nursery rhyme. When I first made these pies, they definitely were a gustatory joy. I now make them on a regular basis to load into the freezer for the quick winter lunch, and even though they're still fabulous, I had to really fight the demons in my head and opt for this recipe instead.


The Chervil and Egg Custard Tart with Tomato and Capsicum Salsa was chosen probably due to it's versatility (and of course flavour). It can be served with a green salad for a light lunch, or sliced into bite sized fingers to have with drinks. Any left over custard can be used to fill mini quiche shells as well.


With only two sleeps to go, I wish everyone a very happy Christmas and hope to be back in the New Year.

Hay Hay its Donna Day #15

When I announced that I was going to make a tart today, my husband, who is notorious for having selective deafness, pricked his ears up immediately. He thought I said "I'm going to be a tart today". When I explained that I was making a tart for Hay Hay it's Donna Day, an event founded by Barbara at WinosandFoodies, he seemed quite disgruntled and went back to reading the paper with a profound look of disappointment on his face.

Trinigourmet, the winner of the last challenge with her faboulous knock your socks off gnocchi, has chosen sweet or savoury tarts as the theme for this month.

Tarts scare me however. I have yet to make a decent pastry without it crumbling before my eyes. Therefore I steer away from home-made pastry recipes. That is, up until now.

I FINALLY MADE A DECENT PASTRY AT LAST. I love these challenge events. It allows me to (a) go and buy a new longed for gadget, (b) try to learn new methods and techniques and (c) persist until I get things right or (d) completely abandon, abort, give up.

Option (d) was my initial thought with this challenge, however option (c) kept jumping into my head. And I've heard people swear, that any idiot can make pastry in a food processor. As I already have a food processor, option (a) sadly never got a look in. So with option (b) and (c) as the plan, with fingers crossed, a Chervil and Egg Custard Tart with Tomato and Capsicum Salsa was hopefully about to be born.

Voila!

The pastry was a cinch. All these years I've been avoiding it, and suddenly one time, everything turns out as it's supposed to.

Ingredients (serves 6)
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped chervil sprigs (you could use parsley if chervil is unavailable)
• 3 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4 cup (185ml) pure (thin) cream
• Pastry
• 1 1/3 cups (200g) plain flour
• 125g chilled unsalted butter, chopped
• 1 egg
• Tomato & capsicum salsa
• 1 small red capsicum, finely chopped (I used bought chargrilled capsicum)
• 1/4 cup semi-dried tomatoes, thinly sliced
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 2 tsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tbs salted capers, rinsed, drained
Method
1. For the pastry, process flour and butter in a food processor until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg, 1 tablespoon chilled water and 1/2 tsp sea salt and process until it comes together to form a smooth ball. Press pastry into a disc, enclose in plastic wrap and chill for 20 minutes. Roll out the pastry on a lightly-floured surface until 2-3mm thick, then use to line a 12cm x 35cm rectangular loose-bottomed tart pan. Prick base with a fork and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line pastry with baking paper and fill with pastry weights or uncooked rice. Bake for 15 minutes, then remove paper and weights or rice and bake for a further 5-8 minutes until the base is dry and pastry is golden.
3. Reduce oven to 170°C. Scatter chervil over tart base. In a bowl, whisk together eggs and extra yolk, then stir in the cream and season with plenty of salt and pepper. Pour egg mixture over chervil and bake for 20-25 minutes until custard is just set. Cool to room temperature in the pan.
4. Meanwhile, for the salsa, toss all the ingredients together in a bowl. Top the tart with salsa, then slice and serve.

And just to prove that it wasn't a fluke, I made this one from Donna Hay's cookbook, Modern Classics Book 2. I'm unstoppable now. Thanks Trini for allowing me to find my inner tart!

4 & 20 blackbirds baked in a pie

And when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing....

Four'N Twenty Pie interpretation from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Four'N Twenty Meat Pie was invented in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia by LT. McLure in 1947. The meat pie is a very popular food product in Australia as strong demand for the pie saw production grow from 50 pies per day to 50,000 pies per hour in between the years of 1948 to 1998.

McLure took a sampling of his pies to the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show where they proved very popular. Increasing demand for the pie caused McLure to eventually open a Melbourne bakery in a pavilion of the showgrounds, later moving to bigger premises in nearby Ascot Vale several years later.

The Four'N Twenty Meat Pie is Victoria's best selling meat pie. It is considered a tradition to consume a Four'N Twenty Meat Pie at an Australian Rules Football match . While not as iconic outside of Victoria, Four'N Twenty pies are still the most commonly available brand in hotboxes, in service stations and corner stores across the country.

In 2006 it was announced that the Four'N Twenty pie would begin being sold on the American market.

Well, I have looked at, scrutinised, analysed and invariably cooked, lots of recipes for "4n20's", as we call 'em 'ere Down Under, but none of them matches up to this recipe. This recipe is the closest to the ridgey didgey, all Aussie Meat Pie that I have found...and of course, it's gotta be served with "dead horse'.

(Aussie slang) dead horse
(meaning) tomato sauce

This is my entry for Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted this week by Melissa, The Cooking Diva, and whilst I've prattled on about an Australian icon, without homegrown dried oregano, (which I place in a brown paper bag, and hang in the garage until it's dry, or more than often, I forget about it), this pie would taste like that famous Colonel's recipe with only 10 secret herbs and spices...THIS IS THE SECRET INGREDIENT..dried oregano.

I remember an Italian chef mentioning on a cooking program, that only the dried purple flowers were worthy of eating. He threw the rest away! Oregano is also an excellent antioxidant. A recent study (Zheng, W. et al. 2002. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Vol 49: pp 5165-5170) of culinary and medicinal herbs identified oregano as the the herb with the greatest antioxidant activity. It scored higher than any fruit or vegetable previously tested. It had higher antioxidant activity than even vitamin E.

AUSSIE MEAT PIE - makes 6 individual pies

1 onion finely chopped
500 gms (1 and 1/4 pounds) ground beef
1 cup water
2 crumbled beef stock cubes or 2 tsp stock powder
1/4 cup tomato sauce (dead horse or ketchup)
4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Pepper to taste
A good heaped pinch (or more) of dried oregano
Pinch nutmeg
3 tblsp plain (all purpose) flour
3 sheets of ready rolled shortcust pastry, thawed
3 sheets of ready rolled puff pastry, thawed
Beaten egg to glaze

METHOD:

Cook onion and beef without any fat until meat is well browned (a non-stick frypan is recommended for this step)

Add 3/4 cup of water, stock cubes, sauces and seasonings.

Blend flour with the remaining water to make a smooth paste. Add to meat and bring to boil, stiring constantly. Boil 5 minutes, remove from heat and allow to cool.

Line individual pie tins with the shortcrust pastry, spoon in cooled meat mixture, cover pie with puff pastry sheets.

Glaze with beaten egg, then bake in a hot oven 230 degrees C, or 450 degrees F, for 15 minutes, reduce heat to moderate and then cook another 25 minutes until pastry is golden.

Oh isn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?